


tides will bring me back to you

by callunavulgari



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Sirens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 17:01:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15756003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: When Axel was sixteen, he did something stupid. He and a couple of his friends took his mom’s car up to the mountains, where they’d spent the better part of the day drinking bottles of stolen liquor and staggering along a heavily forested trail, laughing and bumping into trees as they went. As it was getting dark, they’d ended up near the end of it, where the heavy brush of the trees gave way to open sky and sea, a quiet little cove in the middle of nowhere.Then, one of his friends said, “I dare you to go in the water.”





	tides will bring me back to you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [faorism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faorism/gifts), [Neitzarr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neitzarr/gifts).



> So, this was 100% supposed to be for AkuRoku Day. I figured, hey, I'm replaying the Kingdom Hearts games and Days just shattered me, I should totally write fic. So I... started it. I took a prompt that I got a million years ago from neitzarr for 'swimming together' and another prompt I got a zillion years ago from faorism 'horses anticipating a storm' (it inspired the storm at least, there are sadly no horses) and kind of mashed them together with another prompt that I _didn't_ get for 'one foot in another world' and just kind of ran with it. 
> 
> It's been storming all week and I'm going to see the ocean next week and I just wanted to write about them together, because storms + sea is always A++
> 
> Title is from _Bring Me The Horizon's_ 'Deathbeds', because it seemed apt. Oh, and also. [Beach](https://assets.rbl.ms/13352402/980x.jpg).

There’s a storm moving in along the coast, a vertical wall of darkness that looms ever closer like some great hulking monster. Already, the waves are hectic, tossing themselves against the black sand like they're trying to outrun the storm. The water is dark near the base of the clouds, the waves there cresting bigger, coming down harder.

Axel watches one break apart, crashing down in an agitated rush of white capped water. He flicks his cigarette with a thumbnail, the ash dancing away into the wind. A drop of rain hits his nose.

Roxas is late. He was supposed to be here an hour ago. Axel scans the horizon, hoping that he’ll see something, a flick of a bright fin, an abrupt change of current, a shadowy shape cutting through the murky water, but there’s nothing. Maybe the storm’s kept him.

He isn’t coming, Axel thinks despondently. Who would in this weather? Axel might not be a fish, but he knows enough about the ocean to realize that it might not even be safe to come this close to the beach during a storm like this. The craggy rocks rising up out of the water nearest him are razor sharp, and he’s willing to bet that getting knocked into one of those by a wayward wave wasn’t something you survived easily.

He licks his chapped lips and watches the shelf loom closer. Forks of lightning illuminate the ominous clouds from within, casting them in shades of murky violet. Thunder rumbles in the distance and Axel feels it in his bones, can sense the warning that the sky is giving him. There's a prickle at the base of his neck, like static, hair standing on end. Leave, now, while you can.

Axel stays until he can feel the sting of rain on his face, the wind whipping it into a weapon. It’s probably too late to leave. He left his car back up the trail, hiked his way down the mountainside to get to this beach. The trees would give him some shelter, but up there he’d miss it if Roxas did manage to show up.

He shivers, shoulders creeping up to his ears to ward off the chill. The spray needles against his forearms and the vulnerable curve of his neck. He’d pulled his hair back into a messy knot when he was working his way down the mountain, thinking to save it from the tousled mess the wind would surely work it into, but now he thinks it might have been better if he’d kept it down.

The sky finally opens up above him, the chill of the downpour making him gasp in a way that the stinging drizzle hadn’t. His t-shirt is drenched within minutes, his cigarette having long gone soggy in his fingers, and for a moment, he just sits there, dropping the smoke in favor of digging his fingers into the cold, wet sand.

He blinks out into the haze, eyes stinging from the salt. A wave splashes at his ankles, the storm pushing it farther up the beach. He can taste the brine on his tongue, thick and heavy. He retreats up the beach until his back is pushed up against the rock face of the cliff, and does his best to shield his face from the lashing rain. He shakes water off the back of his neck.

A boom of thunder rocks the beach, and he’s momentarily blinded by the flash of lightning, too near.

“This was the dumbest idea,” he mutters, squinting out at the tumultuous sea. The waves are huge and angry, and too fucking close. Roxas would have to be stupid to chance coming to land now. Axel has two choices. He can wait here and let himself be battered in the open stillness of the beach, or he can risk finding the trail again, and hope to god that it hasn’t gone too slick with mud to make his way back up.

There’s a shout from too far away, a ghost of a sound over the howl of the wind, and Axel swallows hard and glances again to the beach. And there, a shock of color against the dark sand, is Roxas. As Axel stares at him, mouth agape, a wave crashes down over him, tumbling him like a ragdoll across the sand. His tail thrashes, working to push himself even further, and Axel shakes himself free of his stupor and springs to his feet.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Axel demands when he reaches Roxas’s side, stooping low to hook his hands under Roxas’s armpits and haul him up and away from the hungry grip of the waves. “Why the hell did you think that this was a good idea?”

Roxas chokes out a crazed laugh, flashing Axel sharp teeth. He’s using his tail to help push them along, but it’s only helping so much.

When they reach the outcropping of rock that Axel had been attempting to shield himself with, they’re both gasping, muscles shaky with fatigue, adrenaline, or both. Axel sets Roxas down gently, letting him haul himself into a comfortable position against the rocky side of the cliff.

“Seriously, what were you thinking?” Axel asks him again, his chest heaving.

Roxas flashes him another toothy smile. “That you were stupid enough to still be here when the storm came in. Looks like I was right.”

Up close, Roxas looks like shit. There’s dark blood streaking down his neck and his tail, usually the murky green-blue of the sea, is closer to the stormy gray of the waves tossing themselves up the beach. There are bloody patches up and down the heavily muscled length of it where scales have been yanked loose, and a chunk of one of his fins looks like it’s been torn clean in half.

“Jesus,” Axel mutters, touching a particularly rough patch gently. His fingers come away gritty with blood and sand.

“It’s fine,” Roxas assures him, not looking at the tragic slump of his tail. “It’ll be gone soon, anyway.”

Axel blinks. “You’re going to make yourself a pair of legs  _now_?”

Roxas grunts, and carefully repositions himself, his tail flopping against Axel’s legs when he shifts. He gives Axel a look.

“When’s a better time to do it? When you’re drowned like a rat on this beach? You need to get back up that mountain, don’t you?” He points, the expression on his face an impatient mess of agitation. “I need legs to do that.”

“But,” Axel says, a bit nonsensically, “you don’t have shoes.”

Roxas looks at him. “And you,” he says, almost kindly, “do not have a fin, so I can’t exactly take you with me back into  _that_.” He gestures, one flick of clawed fingertips in the direction of the waves. He shakes his head. “Our only choice is to get you back up the stupid mountain, and to do that, I need to grow myself a pair of legs.”

“We could wait it out,” Axel suggests, wincing even as he says it.

“No,” Roxas says with a snort. “We really cannot.”

“But,” Axel starts. Roxas glances up at him, his eyes a bright and steady blue. His jaw is set, and there’s a furrow to his brow that suggests that Axel isn’t going to win this fight. Axel loses track of the words in his head and instead says, simply, “I didn’t bring a change of clothes.”

Roxas smiles at him, the one that makes him look more human than monster, close-lipped and tender. He pats Axel’s knee. “Somehow, I doubt that’s our biggest problem right now. Now be quiet for a moment and let me concentrate. This is really hard.”

 

When Axel was sixteen, he did something stupid. He and a couple of his friends took his mom’s car up to the mountains, where they’d spent the better part of the day drinking bottles of stolen liquor and staggering along a heavily forested trail, laughing and bumping into trees as they went. As it was getting dark, they’d ended up near the end of it, where the heavy brush of the trees gave way to open sky and sea, a quiet little cove in the middle of nowhere.

It was dark and chilly, and the moon was fat and bloated in the sky. They were too drunk to go back, so they’d put together a truly half-assed bonfire assembled from damp driftwood and some sticks that they’d found at the base of the trail. They sat around that bonfire, shivering and high on the power of being fearless and indestructible.

They hadn’t brought any water or food with them, so the gathering around the fire was a pretty somber affair. They’d started coming down, the beginnings of their hangovers creeping over them, so they’d drank the last of the booze, just enough to get them warm and happy again. They played stupid teenage drinking games - spin the bottle, never have I ever, truth or dare.

And then, one of his friends had said, “I dare you to go in the water.”

It was late October. The night was cold, the sand colder. He’d known the water would be freezing. He remembers that very clearly, as his breath fogged the air, that he’d known how cold it would be. He may have even noticed the rocks, the churn of the dark water, and the glitter of the moonlight on the white-capped waves in the distance. But it was the new girl who’d asked him, and he’d been trying to get into her pants for months, so he’d staggered to his feet and smirked, like some wannabe movie star.

The water was cold, frigid as it closed in around his calves, and then his thighs. Before he was waist deep, Axel was shivering so hard that it hurt. But he’d waded out deeper, because his friends were hooting with encouragement from the beach, and teenagers never died in the stories, right?

Night swimming was always a bad idea. Night swimming, in unfamiliar waters, while intoxicated, was how people died. And he should have.

He doesn’t remember much of how it happened, even all these years later. He thinks that he might have staggered off a shelf of sand, that the shock of water closing over his head made him black out. Or maybe a riptide jerked him off his feet, but somehow, he’d ended up under water. The current was a dizzying swirl, tugging insistently, dragging him out, down, who the fuck knew where, he couldn’t tell. He’d emerged gasping once or twice, can remember not quite being able to get his head high enough above the waves to get a proper gulp of air, how the taste of salt water had choked him, making the panic an even more insistent thrum in the back of his head.

Axel didn’t know where he was, which way was up or down, or which direction to swim to loosen the grip of the tides on his body.

The panic hadn’t eased, even in the end, when he’d been blacking out. It was a fist around his throat, a frantic thumping pressure in his chest. Everything was dark beneath the waves, a churning void that gripped him tighter and pulled him down, so at first, the glimmer of light seemed like a blessing. The light drifted closer, almost curious, until Axel could make out the shape of it - the silhouette of something like a person, illuminated by stars of light dotting up and down its body. But most memorable were the eyes, lit up from within like a star gone nova, gleaming an almost painful white in the dark.

He’d lost consciousness then, and when he’d woken up, it had been hours later on a different section of beach.

Later, at school and at home, he’d be told that it was his imagination. That he’d hallucinated the whole experience, or he dreamed it up afterwards as a way to cope with the trauma of nearly drowning.

It wasn’t real, everyone told him. He was terrified, and dying, so he'd called up a monster out of a storybook to be his savior.

But Axel hadn’t imagined it.

He remembered the eyes beneath the waves and how just before he’d blacked out, he’d felt a grip around his waist, bearing him upwards.

 

In his natural state, Roxas was a predator, with three rows of razor sharp teeth and a jaw that came unhinged as easily as breathing. Blades of sharp bone protruded from the lengths of his forearms, ridged and deadly, running from elbows to wrists. His tail was the green-blue of deep water, the color maintaining its vibrancy past his belly, and only just starting to fade into a white so pale it was nearly translucent when it reached the curve of his ribs. He was strong and narrow, his tail thick, heavy, the sharp spines dotting up and down the length of it a blue so dark it was nearly black.

In the dark of deep water, he gave off a glow, freckles of luminescence covering him from head to tail.

As a human, he’s smaller. His skin is still so pale that the dark blue of veins is visible at his wrists and throat. In the water, the translucent gleam of him made him seem otherworldly, impossible, some creature come from the deep to shred flesh and suck the marrow from your bones, but like this, it just makes him seem vulnerable. He’s a wraith of a human, so small and pale, curled up against the door of Axel’s passenger seat. 

He shifts under the blanket as Axel watches him, his eyes gleaming when they pass a street light.

“I’ve never been this far from home before,” Roxas tells him, almost shyly, his fingers picking at the hem of the blanket in his lap.

They’ve just begun to pass out of the storm and the drooping sun is thickly veiled by dark clouds, giving the sky a sickly green tinge in the rearview mirror. The streets are quiet, even now that they’ve left the worst of the mountains behind them.

Roxas glances over at Axel.

At his look, Axel licks his lips. He hesitates, signaling carefully as he changes lanes even though there’s no one around for miles. When he does speak, his voice is a halting, hesitant thing. “Have you ever been out of the water before?”

Roxas shrugs. “Once or twice, when I was young. Our mothers take us so we know how to make the change if we’re ever stolen away. The trips never lasted very long though, and mother made sure to keep us far from any humans.” He frowns, a small pucker appearing between his brows. “It hurt worse than I remembered.”

 _Watching_ had hurt. When he’d changed, it wasn’t like the storybooks. It was as if he’d taken a blade and cleaved his tail in two, and in the midst of all that gore his legs had emerged, sprouting from the torn muscle and sinew like ripe fruit. The sharp tang of blood had been heavy in the air. Axel was lucky he hadn’t been sick all over the sand.

Axel glances away from the road to give Roxas another once over. He’s done it more times than he can count since he hustled Roxas into his car over an hour ago, as if he’s still expecting the ruined tail, but each time he’s checked, Roxas has seemed fine. A little checked out, maybe, but he’d expected that.

He bites his lip. “But you’re definitely okay, right? That was-” he shivers all over, seeing it behind his eyelids again, “-that was  _a lot_  of blood.”

Roxas wrinkles his nose up, shifting his legs around under the blanket. He keeps touching them with his hands, gently, as if he expects them to vanish any minute.

“I’m all right,” he says eventually. He lifts one leg and sets his foot against the glove box, his toes splaying out against the pebbled gray surface. He wiggles them, and for a long moment seems to be marveling at the novelty of doing so before he snorts, and sets his foot back down again. “Human eyesight is really awful though.”

Axel grunts. “It is getting dark.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Roxas raising an eyebrow at him. “Does that matter?”

Axel chuckles and risks another glance. Roxas is still looking at him. His hair is drying in tufts, stiff from the salt water. “Only if you want to see. Humans can’t really see in the dark.”

Roxas makes a face. “God, how are you creatures even still alive?”

“Hell if I know. Sheer obstinance.” He reaches over to fumble with the radio when the station they’re on fades into static. He thinks they might be nearing city limits soon. “We have our strengths and weaknesses.”

When he settles them onto something resembling music, he quiets again, watching the road. Now that they’re nearing civilization, he really doesn’t want to get pulled over with a naked boy sitting in his passenger seat. He hums a little as he drives, paying Roxas little attention when he starts to play with the air vents.

“You make strange things.” Roxas is frowning again, switching the dial from AC to heat, then back again.

Axel smiles at him. “You think this is strange? Wait til you see a phone.” He stops, considering. “A vending machine. An ATM. Oooh, or money. Do your people have a form of currency?”

“We have gold and jewels,” Roxas says after a moment. “But mostly we trade.”

Axel nods. He wonders how large their community is, or if they ever branch out and contact other tribes. If there  _are_  other tribes. He files it away amongst the other million things that he wants to ask Roxas. The List has been growing since Axel was seventeen years old. You would think it would get smaller over the years, as Axel asked Roxas questions, but instead it just grew larger and larger. For every question that Roxas answered, two more sprouted in its place.

They lapse into another silence, this one more comfortable than not. It’s another fifteen minutes before they finally reach the city. Roxas, who’d been on the verge of sleep, straightens up and peers out the window in wonder.

“They’re huge,” he breathes, eyes large as they flit from building to building. They seem to want to take in everything, darting from the great skyscraperws to fire hydrants to the hot dog vendor setting up shop near a local bar. He’s so close to the window that his breath is fogging the glass. The blanket has slumped off of his shoulder on one side, revealing the sloping white curve of it. Axel swallows, and when he hits a stop light, he reaches over and fixes the blanket in place again, fingers grazing over soft skin. Roxas barely glances at him as he does it, hung up on a couple arguing on the sidewalk a few paces away from them. The girl’s arms are gesturing wildly as she speaks, and as Axel watches, she huffs and turns to march quickly away from the man. The light turns green, and Axel drives on.

When they’re beginning to approach Axel’s neighborhood, he clears his throat and says, “We’re probably going to need to talk about what to do with you.”

Roxas blinks and tears his gaze away from the streets. “Do with me?”

Axel coughs. He can see his apartment building in the distance, just past the golden arches of the shitty McDonald's that never seems to be open. He chews on his lip as he drives those last few hundred feet, then turns into his parking lot. There’s a space right near the entrance to the building, thank fucking god.

Once the car is off, the radio cutting into abrupt silence, he turns to look at Roxas.

“You didn’t really say, before, during the storm,” he says awkwardly.

Roxas looks puzzled. “Didn’t say what?”

“What you were planning on doing once we got you here?” Axel says, like a question, and immediately winces. “I mean, I’m happy to have you. Mi casa es su casa and all, just. How long can you keep up the leg thing? Do you need water every night? When do we take you back?”

“Oh,” Roxas says, and Axel watches, delighted, as Roxas begins to blush. His pale cheeks go ruddy, the flush racing down his neck to pool in the shallow dip of his sternum. “Oh, I, uh, didn’t really think about that.”

He watches Axel, and helplessly, Axel watches him back.

After a long minute, Axel blinks. “Do you know how long you can keep the legs?”

“I really don’t,” Roxas tells him. His face has gone very still. It takes a moment for Axel to realize that the stillness is worry. “We were only ever on land before for a few hours at most, just long enough to practice walking. Mother showed us some food in the forest that was edible, but we were always back home before the sun came up.”

“All right,” Axel says, trying to keep his voice steady and chipper. “Worst comes to worst, I’ve got some salt I can throw in my bathtub.”

Roxas gives him an incredulous look.

“I don’t think that would work,” he says doubtfully.

“Yeah, I didn’t think it would.” Axel sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair, staring blankly out at the graying side of his building. There’s new graffiti on it, someone named Henry seems to have tagged a huge swath of it in big blocky green letters. “All right, we’ll just take it easy. Let me know if you start feeling weird or anything. For now, we’ll get you inside and go from there, sound good?”

Roxas stares at him for a long moment, his blue eyes intense. When Axel shivers, Roxas blinks, and smiles at him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Sounds good.”

 

The first time that Axel stumbled down the trail onto that familiar black beach afterwards, he spent a good twenty minutes staring at the dark water churning against the rocks, and felt a jolt of dysphoria so strong that he’d sagged down onto the sand. He remembered the water closing over his head, the grasping tug of it on his body, how the taste of salt had lingered in his mouth the morning after.

He made himself sit there for hours, watching the slow track of the sun across the sky until it began to drop steadily towards the endless stretch of the horizon.

The next time he’d come, it had been winter. He’d worn a thick jacket and stuffed a hat on over his unruly hair, and when he got there, he'd lingered just past the line of high tide with a thermos full of coffee. The sea had been calm that day, sparkling brightly whenever the sun emerged from behind the ever present clouds. He’d only left because it had started to snow.

He went back every few weeks, making the hour long drive up into the mountains and the longer hike down the overgrown trail, thorned plants making desperate grabs for his jeans as he passed.

January and February had passed this way, with nothing but Axel and the sea. It was a kind of pilgrimage, continuously making his way back to the place where he’d nearly died. His friends thought he was crazy, his parents thought he was traumatized, and his shrink thought that the trips could be good for him, if he only brought someone else along.

In March, Axel turned seventeen, and spent his birthday atop the sharpest, blackest rock nearest to the beach. The tide had been low when he arrived, so he’d only had to wade through waist high water before he’d reached the rock and clambered inelegantly up its side. He ate a cupcake his sister had given him and stayed to watch the tide roll in, the taste of the icing, thick and cloying against his tongue. Then he’d leapt from his perch and swam hard back to the shore.

It wasn’t the smartest idea, maybe. But that cove with its dark waters and even darker sand made him feel more alive than anything else did. More than sex or pot or math homework. That water that tried to kill him once was a source of endless fascination, because of what he was sure it hid.

The first week of May, when he staggered down that now familiar trail, he’d felt eyes on him. At first, he’d thought it might be another hiker. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes he ran into runners on the trail. They were harmless, thick-calved men and women with earbuds wedged into their ears who jogged past him with their chests heaving, bodies coated with varying degrees of sweat. They waved sometimes, or kept their eyes politely glued to the ground as they passed, but he’d never seen one down in the cove.

He sat himself down in the sand and pulled out a protein bar, crunching steadily around a mouthful of peanuts and sugar as he glanced around. The beach was deserted as usual, quiet save for the caw of the gulls windmilling frantically overhead.

He looked to the sea.

The creature that saved him was a fright to see in the day. Monstrously pale, it could have been a ghost in the water, its wide dark eyes gazing at Axel curiously.

Axel blinked at it, and raised a hand in greeting.

He’d gotten a sharp flick of the tail in return as the thing retreated back into the water.

That day, he’d stayed longer than usual, dipping his toes into the water and tossing seed for the greedy birds. When the sun was firmly down, he’d regretfully turned back.

Every time after that, he had felt the chill of eyes on him, but never once saw anything in the water. Not the dark silhouette of a shape lurking under the waves, or the tip of a fin. But he kept coming, more and more often, until he was there every week. He burned through gasoline, giving up shifts at the restaurant he was working at to make the drive up.

And then finally, it paid off.

It was high summer when he’d gotten there later than usual. An easy morning shift had turned into a frantic lunch shift because the closing server had gone into labor early. So when he arrived, he still smelled of oil and salt, his uniform shirt crusty at the ends with the remnants of some kid’s barbeque sauce.

He was tired, so fucking tired,  reaching for his pack of smokes before he’d even made it down to the beach.

“You’re late,” the creature called to him from the rock, its dark eyes accusing.

The cigarette dropped from Axel’s mouth and tumbled away across the beach until the tide got a hold of it and sucked it back into the great hungry maw of the sea.

Axel blinked at the creature, his eyes wide.

“Didn’t know we had an appointment,” he called back, numbly reaching down to light another smoke. It tasted acrid on his tongue, worse than usual, but he was grateful for the way each hit steadied him a little more than the last. His hands were shaking.

It watched him, frowning, pale hair hanging into its eyes.

“Why do you come here?” it asked him.

“Why did you save me?” Axel asked it in return, settling down into a crouch as close to the waves as he dared. For a moment, the creature looked annoyed, as if Axel had asked it a question that it couldn’t fathom.

He expected it to leave. But instead, it looked at him evenly, and said, “I don’t know.”

Axel snorted. “You don’t know? Do you do it often? Save us foolish humans stupid enough to venture into your water?”

“Never,” the creature tells him. And then, “But most humans aren’t stupid enough to venture into our waters.”

It looked at him then, its dark eyes intent, and seemed to come to some decision.

Axel flinched when it dove under, but a moment later it was beaching itself near him. Axel stared at it. It was close enough that he could touch it if he wanted. He kept himself very still instead, watching it tug itself up out of the water. Up close, its eyes -  _his_  eyes - were blue.

“Why do you come here?” the boy asked him again.

Axel swallowed. “Maybe I wanted to thank you. What’s your name?”

Axel’s creature seemed to deliberate for a moment, gazing down at the tail slapping at the incoming tide. Then he looked at Axel and said, firmly, “Roxas. You may call me Roxas. And yours?”

Axel smiled. “The name’s Axel.”

 

Roxas looks out of place sitting on Axel’s old, flea-bitten couch. He’s so small that even the sweatpants Axel had outgrown two summers ago have to be rolled up thrice around his ankles, and the threadbare Nirvana t-shirt Axel had given him sags so low that the sharp line of his clavicle is clearly visible. He stares around at the apartment with the same wonder that he’d shown in the city, his eyes flitting about the room. Every once in a while, he’ll pause in his investigation to ask Axel what something was. Axel suspected that he didn’t know what many of the things were, but was only asking about the interesting ones.

After Roxas had asked him what the blender was, he’d turned on the television.

Axel has known Roxas for five years now. He’s seen him every month since that first summer Roxas had deigned to speak to him, and in those intervening years, he’s come to consider Roxas a friend. Roxas has told him of his home, about the skeletal palace beneath the waves and its inhabitants. Axel knows about his family, about the twin brother who frolicked with dolphins, and the deep sea trenches they played in when they were young. In turn, he’d told Axel a little about the human world. He’d told Roxas about coffee and homework and how the city looked in the rain. But he knows that telling stories and seeing are two different things, so he shows Roxas how to flick through the channels, and walks him around the apartment a bit to point out all the little things he’s collected over the years.

There’s a tiny replica of the little mermaid statue on his mantle that Roxas lingers over, his thin fingers tracing the tiny bronze curve of her. Axel’s sister had given it to him as a Christmas present a few years ago.

“But where’s her teeth?” Roxas asks.

“Humans don’t really like things with teeth,” Axel tells him, blinking when a gray shape shoots out of the dark and twines itself around Roxas’s legs. Quickly, he adds, “Also, full disclosure, I have a cat. Please don’t eat her.”

Roxas gives him a disgusted look, already stooping to pet the cat. “Why would I eat her?”

Axel lets out a nervous chuckle and shrugs jerkily. Roxas is stroking the top of Maleficent’s tiny head, his knuckles finding the vulnerable curve of her throat when she tips her chin up into his hand. She’s rumbling like a tiny locomotive, the little attention whore. “I don’t know, it’s just a thing. Saw it in a movie once, now live in fear of introducing my cats to the local sea life.”

Roxas snorts, then makes a trilling little coo when Maleficent flops onto his feet. When he reaches to rub her belly, she actually lets him instead of savaging his hand, wriggling happily under his attention.

“I wouldn’t eat her,” Roxas says, sitting down next to her. Delighted, she hops into his lap and settles in for the long haul, still purring. “She’s too cute.”

“Yeah, sure, she’s cute now. Wait until three in the morning when she’s tearing around here like a little demon.” Just last night she’d torn through the house, and then just as he was falling asleep, catapulted herself onto his chest from six feet away like a miniature cannonball.

Roxas is investigating her teeth with the pads of his fingers, looking at her fondly as she nibbles away at his hand. He raises an eyebrow at Axel. “Thought humans didn’t like things with teeth?”

“Hers don’t count,” Axel says with a dismissive wave. “You just said, she’s too cute. We humans are very fond of our cute things.”

Roxas hums thoughtfully and continues to play with the cat, so Axel turns away from them to make a grab for his cell phone sitting next to the sofa. He flops down onto it, groaning when his spine cracks on impact.

“You want food?” he asks, already scrolling down to his browser. “Pretty sure there’s a pizza place near here that delivers til nine.”

Roxas glances up at him. “What’s pizza?”

Axel blinks, then taps his way to the pizza place’s site. “Oh boy. You are in for a treat.”

Roxas eats most of a meat lover’s pizza himself, then nibbles through two slices of Axel’s hawaiian. Axel tries not to stare at the way his teeth go sharp and pointed as he eats. When they’re done and Roxas is settled down next to him, Axel realizes that he has no idea what to do now. He doesn’t entertain often, and he definitely doesn’t usually bring home flesh eating sea creatures to meet his cat. He's nervous, he realizes. Home alone with the boy of his dreams feels like a very teenage thing to be worried about, but Roxas is so close. Touchable. There are no scales or claws or fangs longer than Axel's pointer finger, there's just Roxas, warm and human-shaped in the dim light of his apartment.

“Um,” he says, and reaches for the remote, only to abort the motion halfway. “What do you want to do now? It’s too late to really show you around town, and my apartment is only so entertaining.”

Roxas hums again, stretching luxuriously, his spine arching like a cat’s. Axel watches his toes curl against the coffee table. The shirt Axel loaned him rides up to show off the soft expanse of his belly. He turns a squinty-eyed look Axel’s way, and shrugs. He looks tired, and lazy, and so much more touchable than he usually does, all of his sharp edges dulled away by humanity.

Axel’s swallows, his eyes tracking the way the sweatpants hang loose off of Roxas’s hips. A curl of liquid heat settles low in his belly and horrifyingly, his cock twitches in his pants. He jerks his eyes away, and thinks of dryer sheets for twenty seconds.

It isn’t as if he’s never thought of it. Roxas is beautiful and terrifying, and for half a decade, he’d met Axel in their cove, keeping to the the shallows as they talked, half submerged in another world. He’d laughed at Axel’s jokes, and eaten the scraps of human food Axel had brought with him, and watched the sunset at Axel’s side. They never spoke of the thing that lingered between them. It manifested itself in late night smiles and long watchful gazes, never pushing, but _there_. The few times they'd touched through the years had left Axel wanting, the fleeting brush of hands or a friendly pat to the shoulder. Roxas was cold, always, his skin damp from the water, but Axel had wanted anyway. And now he's here, and warm, and like this, it isn't so much of a stretch to imagine touching him.

_Get a hold of yourself. Christ._

“Could sleep,” Roxas suggests, smacking his lips, one hand dipping low to scratch idly at a patch of irritated skin low on his belly. “I’m full, and it’s so warm here.”

He turns to look at Axel, only halfway through the motion before he suddenly freezes, something like surprise on his face. His nostrils flare, and for a moment, he clearly wavers, indecision clouding his eyes. He seems to make up his mind as Axel watches, creeping closer across the cushions until he's plastered firmly to Axel's side. He's breathing harder, through his nose, as he hooks a lazy hand around Axel’s wrist, his fingers stroking against his pulse. He blinks slowly down at their hands together, then smiles. When he looks at Axel, his eyes are deep and blue and somehow hungry. “ _You’re_  warm.”

Axel closes his eyes. He licks his lips. “You’re warm too, like this.”

Roxas makes a noise, another strange cooing noise and tips his head closer.

“Not as warm as you. I could barely touch you before, you burned so hot.” His hand trails further up Axel’s arm, lingering in the warm crease of his elbow. He pauses, and Axel opens his eyes to find Roxas watching him closely, his lips ticked upwards into a soft smile. When he sees Axel looking, he ducks his head to press a kiss to the pale underside of Axel’s wrist.

“I can touch you now,” Roxas whispers, his breath hot on Axel’s skin.

Axel swallows convulsively. “Yeah?” he whispers, hoarse.

Roxas nods, and nuzzles the skin there. His eyes are bright. “I  _want_  to touch you now.”

Another kiss. A breath. Axel feels like he’s underwater.

Roxas looks at him and asks, “Can I?”

Helplessly, Axel nods.

Roxas smiles, a pleased tilt to it that makes Axel feel affection down to the very marrow of his bones. He kisses up Axel’s arm, quick, almost reverent little things, pausing every once in a while to lave his tongue across the skin, as if gathering the salt. When he reaches the place where Axel’s t-shirt ends, he slides into Axel’s lap, a movement so graceful and thoughtless that Axel doesn’t even notice until it’s already done. Roxas settles there, looping his arms around the back of Axel’s neck.

Roxas smiles again, and makes a quiet, eager noise in the back of his throat when Axel’s hands land on his hips. He leans forward, still smiling, until their heads are tipped together, the pressure of his forehead against Axel’s broad and warm. He sighs, their breath mingling in the scant space between them.

“Wanted to touch you for so long,” Roxas admits quietly, his eyes slipping momentarily closed. He tips his head side to side and laughs, the sound almost musical in the quiet of the apartment. His eyes flutter open again, peering down at Axel. He touches the side of Axel’s face as if in wonder, and hums happily.

Axel licks his lips and gets to watch as Roxas’s gaze darts down towards it, his pupils eating up all that blue.

“I did too,” Axel tells him, and strokes a line up Roxas’s spine. Roxas shivers against him.

“Then touch me now,” Roxas murmurs, and with a quiet sigh, he brings their mouths together.

Roxas tastes like pizza and salt, his mouth hungry against Axel’s. He kisses wet and open-mouthed, like he doesn’t entirely know what he’s doing, but is too greedy for the touch of it to care. His body curls tighter around Axel’s, fingers threading into his hair. When Axel pulls back to dispose of their shirts, Roxas’s mouth follows his until Axel stops him with a laugh. The moment the shirts are out of the way, Roxas’s fingers dart in to seek out all the hidden places, brushing over ribs and belly. He brings his mouth down to play with a nipple, and Axel gasps, arching sharply against him.

“Please,” Axel says, and doesn’t know what he’s asking for. He wants Roxas, wants him naked and warm and happy, wants the slick curve of his cock and the greedy slide of his tongue. He aches for it, so sharply now, after all these years of looking and hoping and waiting. A month ago, he’d wanted, but a month ago, he hadn’t even known this was possible.

“Mmm,” Roxas hums, and scrapes his teeth across goose-pebbled flesh. He glances up at Axel slyly. “Please, what?”

Axel shudders, but can’t speak, because Roxas has found Axel’s throat with his mouth. He sucks a mark into the tender skin there, fingers clasping Axel’s jaw.

“Please,” he says again, a little wildly. And then, “Do you know how?”

Roxas shrugs, a smooth motion of his shoulders. “You can show me how humans do it,” he whispers, so very sweetly. Axel groans.

There’s lube in the bedroom, so that’s where Axel takes him. Because he wants that. He could settle on blowjobs and the awkward stroke of Roxas’s fist now if he thought he could have this forever, but if he just gets the one day, then he  _wants_  this. He wants Roxas, wants him on him, in him, whatever Roxas will give, he doesn’t  _care_.

Roxas looks good against his sheets, looks good looking up at Axel, his eyes hungry, mouth wet. He reaches, and Axel lets Roxas pull him down onto the bed after him, lets Roxas pull the rest of the clothes from their bodies and slot them together. Roxas’s mouth opens in a silent gasp, his body curving up to meet Axel’s.

Axel kisses the curve of his neck and reaches for the lube.

“Like this,” he tells Roxas, and reaches between his own legs. Roxas watches Axel finger himself open, eyes heavy lidded, and waits until Axel’s easily working two fingers inside himself to slide in a third finger alongside them. Roxas curls his finger curiously once, but otherwise takes his cues from Axel, rubbing and stretching until Axel is panting above him.

“Yes,” Axel tells him, and then breathes it again as he slides his fingers free.

He makes Roxas sit back, then crawls into his lap, and works himself back onto Roxas’s cock.

He’s done this a few times, with boys and with girls, and always likes it, the feel of them spreading him open, filling him up so nice. With Roxas it’s something else. Watching Roxas tip his head back against the headboard, his mouth open wide with startled pleasure, Axel knows that every other experience has been leading up to this one.

He rocks his hips gently, building a rhythm, his hands clutching tight to the headboard as Roxas digs thumbprints into his waist.

“You’re so  _warm_ ,” Roxas murmurs heatedly at one point, eyes closed, lost to the sensation of it. Axel kisses him quiet and fucks him faster, alternating between a quick and steady pace and a slow rhythmic one whenever Roxas starts getting close. He draws it out, makes it last as long as he can, until they’re both slick with sweat and he can taste the salt in his mouth.

Axel sets his teeth against Roxas’s throat, his resolve crumbling when Roxas lets out a tiny overwhelmed sob.

“Please,” Roxas gasps, and Axel closes his eyes and lets go.

He watches Roxas come, and afterwards, he kisses the tears from his eyes and curls close.

“I thought I knew you,” Roxas tells him a while later. They’re tucked together, Axel’s arm thrown haphazardly around Roxas’s waist. Patches of scales have begun to erupt across the meat of Roxas’s thighs. He wants to ask Roxas a million questions. How often he can do this, if becoming human once or twice a month will adversely affect him in any way, if he wants to come back here with Axel. If he wants to stay forever. He thinks they probably don’t have long before they’re forced back to the water though, so Axel stays silent, his fingers mapping out the shape of Roxas’s human skin.

Axel makes a quiet, inquisitive noise.

“That first time, when I saved you.” Roxas pauses, staring upwards at the ceiling above them. “I saw you in the water, and thought I knew you. I’d never met any humans before, but I _knew_ you.”

“Maybe we knew each other in a past life,” he jokes, squinting tiredly in Roxas’s direction.

Roxas’s mouth curves around a smile. He presses a kiss to the space just above Axel's heart.

"Yeah," he says. “Maybe.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> For those interested, my [main blog](http://callunavulgari.tumblr.com/) and my [writing blog](http://callunawrites.tumblr.com/)!


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